severance

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. The act or process of severing.

n. The condition of being severed.

n. Separation; partition.

n. Severance pay.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. The act of severing or the state of being severed.

n. A separation.

n. A severance payment.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. The act of severing, or the state of being severed; partition; separation.

n. The act of dividing; the singling or severing of two or more that join, or are joined, in one writ; the putting in several or separate pleas or answers by two or more disjointly; the destruction of the unity of interest in a joint estate.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. The act of severing, or the state of being severed; separation; the act of dividing or disuniting; partition.

The revelation comes one day after Doug Hampton, the husband of Ensign's former mistress, told Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston that Ensign paid Cynthia Hampton, who was also an employee of Ensign's political action committee and re-election campaign, more than $25,000 in severance when she stopped working for Ensign's political operation.

While the departed CEOs were presiding over this debacle, they collectively earned hundreds of millions of dollars, and when they departed, they left with millions more in severance and retirement benefits.

The 40-year-old congressional staffer last year collected nearly $2 million in severance payments from his former employer, a lobbying firm that specializes in winning benefits from the committee he now serves.